Critical Essay by Naomi Lebowitz

In the following excerpt, Lebowitz argues that Svevo 's later fiction evolves into a more traditional and less dramatic form.

It has often been noted that the more traditional narrative modes of Svevo's shorter pieces, in relation to Confessions of Zeno, entail a loss of intimacy between the author and the hero. This is misleading, for there is a compensating intimacy between the favorite meditations of Svevo and the reflections of the last stories uninhibited by distracting fictional mediation. The conventional journey structure of "Short Sentimental Journey," a picaresque of the vacationing mind, does not lead the hero, a likable and sensitive, but by no means extraordinary man, farther from Svevo's atmosphere than Zeno. It is only because his reflections, modest though they be, bring us so comfortably...